Susan Else: Fabric sculptor creates a world of colorful characters

By Ann Parker

Monday, October 19, 2009

Susan Else brings scraps of cloth to life.

The rooms of her high-ceilinged Victorian studio/home are populated with Else's ingenious three-dimensional figures, frozen in movement. A patterned elephant walks a tightrope surrounded by quilted vines and leaves. Multicolored cats stretch and preen as pawns on a giant quilted chessboard. A woman runs on her bright bedspread, corded hair flying.

"I grew up watching people make art," says Else, who was a recent Open Studios participant. Her father was an accomplished painter, her mother a talented sculptor. "But I always loved textiles." Two little dolls that she made at age 9 peer from a nearby wall.

Susan earned a degree in literature and American studies at UC Santa Cruz's Cowell College, then worked as an editor and proofreader for UCSC Publications. After training in art history, she was a museum registrar in Monterey for four years but continued working with textiles as a hobby, weaving and quilting. "I'd been on the edges of the art quilt movement for a while: Off the walls and onto the walls.'"

"I got to the point where I needed to do my own work," says Else, who started creating three-dimensional pieces in 1998. "Now I can't imagine doing anything else." As a "fabric sculptor," she describes her process of beginning with one successful element and adding on to it. "I start with a wisp of an idea," she says. "It's totally cumulative."

Susan notes, "I treat cloth not as a flat surface but as a wild flexible skin for three-dimensional objects." The Wall Street Journal described one of her pieces on display at Quilt National 2009 as a "startling quilted object." The sculpture: a multicolored cloth skeleton, titled "Nothing to Fear."

Some of Else's works are small and cunning: tiny acrobats, a fabric teapot enclosing a storm-tossed sailboat. Others are stunningly sizeable: her fabric chess set measures 4-by-4 feet, supporting some pieces more than a foot tall. And "Above the Boardwalk" is a 55-inch-high working Ferris wheel, complete with colorful riders in each seat.

"One of my goals in working with art quilting is to show it as a medium that can go anywhere, do anything," Susan says passionately. "Something magic happens when you're making art "" but it's also routine and hard work."

She smiles, "I was a shy little girl who morphed into a not-so-shy adult "" I really didn't come into my own until I started making art as art."

Susan Else

Born: Dec. 20, 1953, in SacramentoFamily:Husband Marty McGillivray, software engineer and photographer; daughter Sarah, 24; son Daniel, 21; and Roxie the dogParents: Father Robert Else, painter and teacher at Sacramento State, where a gallery is named after him; mother Georgianna Else, metal sculptor (she worked under the name Jorjana Holden)Her house/studio: Three-unit co-op built in 1887; they have the downstairs.Her technique: Machine reverse applique: 'I do about half-and-half machine and hand-sewing.'Work created in one year: 'I don't produce a lot -- 10 or 12 pieces.'Range of prices: From $150 to $8,000 for 'Above the Boardwalk'Video of Ferris wheel piece: http://www.susanelse.com/ferriswheel.htmlWHERE TO SEE HER WORK: At her studio by appointment or check out 'Visual Conversations with Women in the Arts: Portraits of artists exhibited with their work,' through Dec. 4 atEloise Pickard Smith Gallery, UCSC's Cowell College, Santa Cruz.QUOTE: 'They ought to lock me up -- I have way too much fun.'Details:selse@pacbell.net,www.susanelse.com, 423-0515